Somethin' about nothin'

Look out world! It's another cooking attempt by yours truely. Although, I did learn my lesson from the last attempt and conducted my google search before cooking. This time I'm going for something simple...chips and salsa. Can it get any easier than that? I even found a special mango salsa where I'm going to add in a little peach for some extra flavor. Mmmm. Oh...and as an extra bonus, the dog loves tortilla chips so the odd's of her whimpering at the mere thought of having to eat my cooking moves my chances of success completely in my favor.

And so it begins...I pull out the chef's knife and begin to chop and dice. I'm sooo excited to try this recipe and see what the dog thinks of it this time. (My dear love is traveling again and missing all of the excitement.) The piles of onion, cilantro, mango, peach, and tomatoes are all ready to be mixed with a little lemon juice and some spices. Hehe! I'm almost there. I decide to warm some blue corn tortilla chips in the oven before I run over to my googled recipe to confirm which spices are needed.

The laptop I'm using is sitting on the sofa table behind the longest side of the couch. This also happens to now be where our small dog is perched to watch my excellent knife wielding skills, with both ears up and head cocked to the side (and really, can you blame her...I was on fire!). Unfortunately, when I walked towards her to look at the laptop, she thought (or at least hoped) that I was bringing her an edible reward for being such a good and patient little doggy. In her fit of excitement, she inadvertantly jumped all over the laptop keys and lost the recipe I was using. Now, you'd think that I would just be able to go back to the website and pull up the recipe, but I went through so many sites and recipes trying to find something simple that I have no idea where I finally ended up.

Not to worry...I'll just wing it! Let's see, we have Oregano...nah. Mustard seed...nah. Salmon Furikake...what the heck is that...nah. Red Chile Pepper...too hot. Ground Cumin! Now we're talkin'. Cayenne Pepper! Even better! Saffron...mmmm, saffron.  Now that I have my spices, I mix everything together and can hardly wait for the taste test. It smells yummy...and unusually spicey. We're almost ready now. We just need the chips...crap, the chips!  Okay, so they're a wee bit dark, but hey...they're the dogs favorite treat so things are still in my favor. That is, until I tried the salsa. My tongue was on FIRE! Where's the flavor? Wait...maybe a chip will help. ....no, not really. Hmmm. Let's try the dog...it's still her favorite treat so I'm sure to at least have a small victory here. I'll just make sure her water bowl is full ahead of time. She's sooo excited as I put some in her bowl and set it down.

You're probably wondering what happens next. Well, she sniffed it, let out a huff, and then walked away. I called her back to see if she'd at least have some of the chips...but no...apparently our dog is a bit of a food snob and cannot find it within herself to eat a chip that's a bit on the dark and crispy side.  Not quite accepting my defeat, I decide to try it myself one more time. Maybe I just didn't mix it well enough and had a lot of heat in one spot...but I was wrong. My bite was so hot that I couldn't taste anything for the rest of the night. I'm not giving up though...I will cook some day!